


Blaze

by taxomin (CyanCheetah)



Category: Black Clover - Tabata Yuki (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Fantasy, Good and Evil, Good versus Evil, Jealousy, Major Original Character(s), Minor Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, POV Original Character, Revenge, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Villains, but not really, envy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:54:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24308536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyanCheetah/pseuds/taxomin
Summary: “I will become the Wizard King,” he shouted, “and you will not get in my way.”Horror sunk into her bones as the grimoire flew into Yuno’s hands, light embracing him like a star in the midnight sky. It didn’t make sense. Esme didn’t understand any of it. Was she destined to live in the shadow of the boy who stole her grimoire?It wasn’t fair.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12





	Blaze

As a child, Esme memorized the pattern of flickers that the flames made. It enchanted her, the fire’s curves and twirls, the way it danced across the firewood and burned it into submission. After practicing for many hours, the dance of her arms imitating the flames, not even the simplest flicker appeared from her hands. She was sorely disappointed.

Many of the other village children could gather flames, as it was a common affinity amongst them, but Esme wasn’t blessed with it. Sometimes, when the weather was nice and the older children played in the fields, Esme watched them summon their abilities with an envious pout. Mana was an experience, spreading out into the world like a broken artwork, pieces of it latching onto the souls of the tiny, clueless people of the land. The children pranced and laughed and sung, their magic catching fire in the wind.

Esme couldn’t summon mana yet, but she could feel it sink into her bones. It was constantly roiling through her body, twitching like a limb that’s fallen asleep, and whenever she closed her eyes to meditate in the living room, the lights would flicker and the fireplace would extinguish with a _woosh_. It was interesting, she surmised, but it’s not like she could show it off. Papa would come in and chastise her for it, telling her to stop blowing on the flames. Esme nodded and relit the fireplace.

But, the day was coming.

It was that day, the day that boiled excitement in the village children’s hearts. The Grimoire Acceptance Ceremony, when the fifteen-year-olds in the area received their grimoires.

Esme, with a grin on her face—one she rarely showed—bounced over to the library and walked inside, admiring the vast array of books surrounding her. The shelves spread far above her, and as she stretched her fingers to the air, the books just out of reach, she could feel the beautiful art of mana inside of them, thrumming like a heartbeat. There were many other young teens, all with faces alight with anticipation, and she could not help but reflect the same. Once the library filled to near bursting with people of various backgrounds, a man in wizard garb levitated down to the front of the room and began an introductory speech.

“Welcome, young men and women. You all begin a new journey today…”

Esme ignored him and instead studied the faces around her. There were many, but she observed some with a note of recognition. Like the boys from the church a few buildings down from her house, always gravitating toward each other. That black-haired boy was like the sun, bright and brimming with potential, and Asta—he was so loud that his name grazed itself into her memory—was like the moon, orbiting around the sun, but never getting closer. An interesting dynamic, those two. She couldn’t tell if they were agitated friends or amicable enemies.

The wizard man grabbed her attention again. “Now, for the awarding of the grimoires!”

Esme’s heart hopped into her throat as the world became a glimmering coat of rainbow colors. The grimoires flew off the shelves and twirled in the air, dancing like the flames of her childhood, and it was so striking that she almost cried. Mana flooded the air around her like a dam breaking loose, rushing over her body, and drowning her in a wave of _glory_. She hiccuped, body tense and shaky under the pressure of magic.

Esme stretched her hands out again, fingers trembling in the air, praying for something, _anything_ , a blessing to fly into her fingers. She compelled it, made sure to force it into existence with the very branding of her soul itself.

That’s when she saw it—that book, the brightest book in the room, glittering with mana surrounding it like a halo. It must’ve been sent from the heavens, that gleaming book. Beyond the shine of bright light, however, she glanced the cover, and her knees turned to jello. It was a four-leaf clover, and someone in this room was about to receive it.

It _had_ to be her. Esme, with the strength of her will, stated this in her mind. _It had to be her._

She reached her hand to it until her arms burned with the effort, so desperate that it brought the earlier tears back to the surface, and they welled in her eyes. So desperate that her very soul leaked into her fingertips and reached. The book responded. It hovered down to her, and her fingertips near grazed its spine, before it was ripped out of her space.

“Wait!” She shouted, and the attention of the room snapped to her and the gleaming book hovering farther away.

The book brushed past the shoulders of many, and it seemed to hesitate in front of one particular boy. _That_ boy. The one from the church, the boy that was so alike the sun, and Esme felt the envy surge into her body until she was dizzy with it. Again, she reached out to the book, and again, it hovered into her direction and paused in the middle. The children separated and made a clear path for the book to travel.

The book, that grimoire that was meant for _her and her alone_ , trembled between Yuno and Esme, and both had their hands outreached like an invisible game of tug-of-war. Esme glared the boy down fiercely, certain that he was the obstacle to her prize. She scowled at the book then, grieving over its indecision.

“That book is mine.” Yuno, the awful, scorching sun, spoke into the air.

Tension rose between them like a teacup filled to the boundary, under threat of spilling over with the slightest mistake. The room itself was even worse off, a thick silence blanketing the people as they watched the struggle of two, destined for great power.

“You’re mistaken. It belongs to me,” Esme proclaimed. “So give it up!”

She wondered, belatedly, if this was a battle of wills or a battle of mana capacity, because her mana was dispersing at a rapid pace. Esme was becoming tired.

Yuno, the boy with a seemingly unmovable face, looked incensed for once. Like someone had finally challenged him, his very identity, and tried to rip it from his fingers. Esme could say the same.

“I _will_ become the Wizard King,” he shouted, “and you will not get in my way.”

Horror sunk into her bones as _her_ grimoire flew into Yuno’s hands, light embracing him like a star in the midnight sky. Esme trembled and collapsed to the floor, disbelief singing a sordid tune into her ears and forcing the tears she had been fighting to spill from her eyes. She stared as the light faded, but the pure mana the grimoire had emanated did not leave, only settling in the church boy’s fingers.

It wasn’t fair.

* * *

Esme stared at the burnt, brittle leftovers of the fireplace. The flames had raged for hours while she sat there, ruminating over the days past until her thoughts settled on that ceremony, her stolen grimoire, and the fire dispersed abruptly.

Since the grimoire had chosen both her and Yuno, she didn’t receive another one. The master of the Grimoire Tower said that she could receive one before the next ceremony if she so wished. Esme almost screamed at him, but her father was there and knew when his child was losing her wits. He agreed and told the wizard that they’d be back another time before guiding his sobbing child out of the Grimoire Tower.

It didn’t make sense. Esme didn’t understand any of it. The grimoire chose both of them, so they both had great potential, but did the church boy just happen to have more potential than her? Was she destined to live in the shadow of the boy who stole her grimoire? Despair swelled to the surface, as it had been doing for the last month. Yuno’s declaration swam in her head. _‘I will become the Wizard King, and you will not get in my way!’_ Esme refused. She’d prefer Asta to become the Wizard King over Yuno, the grimoire thief, any day.

Anger simmered in her bones as she stood before the fireplace and marched out of her home, and marched through the streets, and marched until her feet ached and she stood before the Grimoire Tower one more time.

It was old and tall, and the initial shimmer of radiance that made Esme giddy had turned sour as the days passed, but anticipation continued to stir in her blood. She opened the wooden doors and spoke to one of the tower’s keepers.

“Excuse me,” She said, tone measured and polite. “I didn’t get a grimoire at the last ceremony.” The keeper looked shocked, blinking rapidly at the statement. “I’d like to try for one now, please.”

“Oh. That was you?” He started. “Well. If you didn’t get one the first time, it’s unlikely you ever will.”

Esme hissed at him, baring all of her teeth to display her displeasure. He must have mistaken her for Asta, the boy who didn’t have any mana at all, but she _did_ have it. The reason she didn’t get a grimoire at the ceremony wasn’t that she had no magical aptitude, it was that she had enough to rival the other little prodigy in their village. She hated that so many people were so mistaken, spreading rumors all around, especially about her and Yuno. They kept saying that she had tried to use her magic to ‘steal’ his grimoire when Yuno _stole it from her._

The nasty, upturned way the keeper looked at her told Esme that he believed those rumors. It twisted her stomach, made the hair on her skin stand at attention. She hated it.

“I’d like to try again, please.” She growled. “I was told that I could.”

The keeper tutted and beckoned her to another room, where the master of the Grimoire Tower sat behind a rickety wooden desk. Esme hadn’t taken much time to observe him at the ceremony, but he was certainly an aged, experienced man from the gray that cascaded from his head and his chin, and the well-worn wizard garb on his curved back.

She stepped inside and offered a polite bow.

The man had been writing something, obviously of relative importance, as he quickly closed the journal and straightened in his chair upon seeing her. He dismissed the keeper and smiled at Esme.

“Hello, dear. If I recall, you’re here to receive a grimoire.”

“I am.”

The man hummed before moving from behind his desk and guiding her into the main room, where the shelves and shelves of books held a variety of grimoires. They both stood in the middle of the room, and the amazement that had been stamped out of her returned with a fervor under the scrutiny of beautiful magical books.

Master Drouot—as she had learned his name to be—continued to smile in that placating, patronizing way and Esme tried to smile back, but it was more of a grimace.

“Alright,” He said. “Use your mana to call the grimoire forth, and it will come to you.”

Esme closed her eyes, actively trying to ignore the presence of Master Drouot, and allowed her mana to swell inside of her, calling on her grimoire with the intensity of a mother during childbirth. She called with her soul, desperate and searching.

* * *

In another part of Hage Village, Yuno stared down at the grimoire in his hands. It seemed to shudder and levitate, trying hard to leave his side and wander into the world beyond.

Confused, Yuno grabbed onto it tightly and held it to his chest, securing it with a bit of mana for safety. After that, it calmed, returning to its docile and obedient state, doused with the essence of Yuno’s soul.

* * *

“It’s not working!” Esme shouted, sadness etched into the trembling of her fingers.

Master Drouot observed the girl for a while, seeming to think something over in his head. He clasped his hands together and chuckled.

Esme swallowed down her bile and cut him an annoyed look. She didn’t like being laughed at, nor did she like being looked down upon. It seemed everyone was doing a bit of both lately.

“Well now,” He smiled, patting Esme on the back. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. It appears that your mana is calling out to someone else’s grimoire, and a special grimoire at that.”

Esme knew what grimoire he was talking about. She cursed the likes of church boy Yuno up and down in her head. Even now, he was taking opportunities away from her and making everything so much _worse_ , and he didn’t even know it. What was she going to do without a grimoire? Master Drouot seemed to pick up on the girl’s inner turmoil and offered a few words to placate her boiling rage.

“It’s not the end. You still have a few options, even if they’re a little, ah, complex. You could search around for another grimoire that resonates with you just as deeply. Or have a customized grimoire made, though that’s very expensive. And you could even learn magic without a grimoire!”

Esme sneered. “I couldn’t even get my grimoire to come to me, and you think I could learn magic _without_ one?”

Her tone was rude and angry, which reflected the stewing pot of lava curling inside of her belly, and the air in the room became tense. Esme refused to say another word as she swept out of the grimoire library, coming upon the keeper from earlier on her way out. He looked smug, like a hunch he had was proven right, and he opened his mouth as she stomped past.

“I’m assuming you weren’t able to—”

“Shut up!” She screeched, raising a fist in his direction.

Something in the air shuddered, shifted, twisted in some dark, yet mystical manner and Esme gasped under its weight. The keeper was wide-eyed, either with shock or terror, as a tendril of what could only be mana twirled from his body and into Esme’s fingertips. Her mana reservoirs were expanding rapidly by the second, filling and filling beyond what she thought to be her limit, and from what she could see, draining just as rapidly from the keeper. He was frozen in place, held captive by the sting of Esme’s power sinking into his bones and latching onto him with the ferocity of her anger.

Then, he collapsed.

Esme didn’t check if he was dead or not. She just ran until her legs burned.


End file.
